China's total land surface, was covered by desert, gobi, or desertified land. Over the past half century, China's deserts have been expanding at the rate of 1000 km² per year. In all, 176,000 km² of land in north China have been desertified. Most of this land, already desert or in the process of desertification, lies in a broad "transition zone," from the Daxinganling Mountains in the east to Xinjiang in the west, north of China's agricultural belt to the borders of Mongolia and the Soviet Union. This region includes 267,000 km² of rangeland and 11 million people in 81 counties. The mission of the institute is to study the formation and character of desert regions and to experiment with means for predicting, preventing, and reversing the process of desertification.

The IDR maintains three major research stations. The Shapotou Desert Experiment and Research Station, established in 1956, at the southeast edge of the Tengger Desert (37°27'N, 104°57'E), has done notable work in agricultural development and sand dune fixation. The Linze Sandland Utilization Experiment Station, established in 1975, on the north side of the Linze Oasis in the Hexi Corridor (39°20'N, 100°09'E), conducts studies and experiments on the prevention of desertification at the oasis periphery and the introduction of sand-holding species. The Naiman Desertification Rehabilitation Experiment and Research Station, located in Naiman Banner, Inner Mongolia (42°58'N, 120°42'E), a transition zone between dry farming and grazing at the southwest corner of the Horqin [Keerqin] Steppe, focuses on the origins, development, and processes for reversing desertification of the steppe margin zone. Two other stations—in Yanchi County, Ningxia, and Fengning County, Hebei—also study methods for rehabilitating and improving desertified rangeland.

Prior to 1985, IDR undertook several expeditions and surveys of desert rangelands in Inner Mongolia, Ningxia, and Gansu. Since 1985 the institute has conducted three major research projects relating to desert rangelands. Experiments with desertification control and rehabilitation in Naiman Banner, conducted in cooperation with the Swedish Agency for Research Cooperation with Developing Countries, include study of the vegetation of this region to determine above-and below-ground biomass, dynamics, and photosynthesis in different habitats. Data have been collected from 80 observation stations and 10 permanent sites. The results have been published in Desertification and Rehabilitation—Case Study in Horqin Sandy Land, edited by Zhu Zhenda (Lanzhou: Institute of Desert Research, Academia Sinica, August 1988). A project on the control and rehabilitation of desertified lands in Yanchi County includes the monitoring of productivity of vegetation in 23 permanent sites (9 on sand land, 4 on lowland, 10 on high plateau); experimentation with rangeland improvement in different habitats, mainly drifting sands and degraded vegetation; and the introduction of more than 40 species of forage plants to improve or control rangeland quality. Finally, as part of its project on "Optimum Ecological Modeling of Rangeland in Maowusu" (see section on the Institute